I loved being pregnant. I loved carrying around my babies, feeling them move and grow, imagining what they looked like, who they were. I loved how feminine my body felt, how strong and powerful and curvy and ripe every part of me was. Most of all, I loved trying to figure out their names.
The process was really introspective for me. I tried to get a sense of their personalities in utero, which was surprisingly easy. The names had to be ones that fit them as toddlers and adults. Ones that would be common enough to be pronounced easily, yet not be the most popular name of the generation. It could not be obviously manipulated into a teasing rhyme. It had to be a name that wouldn’t doom my daughters to the stripper pole or trailer park, would look good on a resume, and would suit them throughout their lives. I would sit and ponder these names for hours, days and weeks. I think that I did a really good job of naming each of them, but the best one was Madeline.
Maddie is my third daughter, at 17. Her name was the easiest one. Madeline, meaning great, magnificient, tower. From literature, the Madeline series of books, “The smallest one was Madeline.” It all fit. Well, until her younger sister, Hazel, was born, though now she is the shortest of her sisters, though still taller than I am by a couple of inches.
Born at 8 lbs, 9 ounces a couple of weeks before the world changed on 9/11, Maddie was a perfect infant. She had a birthmark on the back of her calf that looked like a Winnie the Pooh honeybee. Round, soft, with a head full of black hair and a feisty disposition. Strong. She had turquoise eyes at birth, and when she would get angry they would glow green. She was a gorgeous baby.
As a toddler, Maddie showed exceptional physical strength and agility. My mother marveled at her ability to haul groceries up the stairs of our brownstone, even the jugs of milk, before she was 3. She had a penchant for Heart, and would sing along with “Dog and Butterfly” in her sweet little voice, and then suddenly be banging her head to “Barracuda.”
Her sense of adventure and need to express herself physically led to a lot of pediatric urgent care visits. She broke a toe once, which remains bent to this day, and she has named it Quasimotoe. This was the result of her deciding to lubricate the top of her dresser with lip balm and launch herself onto the bed. She also broke her elbow on a scooter, and has had a number of close encounters. She discovered, at about 6 or 7, that she could climb the doorway with her hands and feet up to the top, and then let go with her hands and hold herself high above the rest of us. It was startling, marvelous. And I once had a dream of her riding a kangaroo on a dusty road, kicking up clouds of dirt. That’s Maddie.
A few weeks ago Maddie had the flu. She went to the doctor, got swabbed, diagnosed, and was home feeling lousy. I live in an apartment downtown, about five miles from her dad’s home where she lives. She called me late one evening and said, “Mom, can you come here? I found a lump in my breast.” I got in the van and drove directly to Charles’s house. She was in bed, feverish, and just feeling crummy and pointed to the location. I palpated the spot and sure enough, there was a lump. It was obvious, large and scary. She said she calls it “Pickle.” It was an apt name, feeling a lot like a small mini pickle. I told her not to worry, that we could get an appointment with her doctor right away and make sure it was nothing.
About a week and a half later we were at her primary care physician’s office, and her CNP walks in, cheerful, happy to see Maddie. Everyone always is. We tell her what we found and she washes her hands and says that these things are pretty common, usually a cyst, nothing to worry about, and begins to examine the area. Her face changed as she found Pickle. I could see concern wash over her. And she was very good about being calm, and saying that she still thought it was likely nothing, but because it didn’t move when the tissue was manipulated, and that it wasn’t painful, she wanted to make sure, so she referred us for an ultrasound.
The ultrasound was this Monday. It revealed a mass about an inch long, which looks very much like a pickle. The radiologist came in and said while it is very uncommon for teenagers to develop breast cancer, the sudden appearance of Pickle was concerning, and she wanted to get Maddie back in for a biopsy.
That was today, Wednesday. Maddie was so brave. I knew she was scared, and she knew I was scared, but I sat at the head of the table and kissed her forehead and stroked her hair and cheek while a surgeon inserted a needle into her breast to deliver Lidocaine to the area to prepare it for biopsy. She used a scalpel to make the tiniest incision to provide room to insert the large needle for tissue extraction. She removed four samples of Pickle, and inserted a titanium clip to mark the area. We gazed at the little worms of tissue in the sample jar in amazement, and they cleaned my girl up and bandaged her.
She was amazing. She joked about me messing up her eyebrows, which are perfection and she worked really hard to make so. She kept calm. She kept me calm. I have been holding in a blood curdling scream since I first heard the words, “I found a lump,” three weeks ago.
We get the results Friday. The surgeon was very quick to say that it is far more likely that it is a fibroadenoma, a benign tumor. Truly, in my cursory research, it is difficult to find cases of breast cancer in teens. In fact, it is such a rare occurrence that statistics are not kept. However, it happens, and this terrifies me.
Maddie is so beautiful. Physically she is perfection. Carmel colored hair, hazel eyes, freckles. I have never met a more beautiful person. Inside, however, is where Maddie’s beauty is most evident. She is fearless and funny and loving and bright. My life has been made better for being her mother. I love her beyond all reason.
And tonight, after all she has been through today, she called me to tell me that her cat, Gabby, who is 22, is dying. So I ran back to the house with her older sister and friend, and we had a comedy roast of the old girl, curled up in Maddie’s lap in the recliner. We fed her whipped cream, sang “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” and watched Spongebob with her. I hated to leave when I did, knowing Gabby may not be there in the morning, and knowing the pain this is causing Maddie.
Tonight I am wishing I could hold her all night, mess up her eyebrows, kiss her sweet cheeks, and tell her how much I love her.
